The Dilworths have just got back from a well received debut gig at Melbourne’s Bennetts Lane Jazz Club as part of the Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival.
A big thanks goes out to Steve Barry, filling the piano chair, Sonja Horbelt, Tamara Murphy, Martin Jackson and Bennetts Lane for making the gig possible. It was wonderful to make our debut to a full house.

Roger Mitchell uploaded some great photos of the gig that you can check out here.

Meet the Casey Golden Trio.
I’ve known all these guys for years and grew up playing music with the drummer, Rob Turner. Last night they played a smokin’ gig at 505 and I’ve uploaded two tracks that you can check out. There’ll be a debut record coming out later this year which is being recorded as I type and if you can, you should definitely give these guys a listen. A few weeks ago I spoke to Casey about doing a feature on his band and so here it is, in his own words.

When we first started playing together I wasn’t really thinking about forming a band too much. I met both Brendan and Rob on non-jazz gigs so we decided to get together and have a play on some jazz stuff one day. I remember thinking at the time how easy it was to play with these guys. It felt really good from the beginning. Around that time (mid 2008) I’d started writing a lot more than I had been before and it just seemed like a natural choice to use Brendan and Rob on some of my original tunes. We all have pretty eclectic tastes in music but there is a lot of crossover between the three of us in favourite bands/records/musicians and this is part of why I like playing with these guys. I’ll often bring tunes to rehearsal that are unfinished or vague and it never takes these guys long to come up with the sound I’m after.

From a compositional point of view, my main influence comes from a lot of the younger guys living in New York at the moment. Guys like Aaron Parks, Robert Glasper, Lage Lund, John Ellis, Gerald Clayton, the list goes on. I think all the guys mentioned above are great composers and they all have a really clear concept of how they want their bands to sound. I have a pretty clear idea of how I want the trio to sound and that sound is very much influenced by these people. Alister Spence is another important influence. I used to learn from Alister and he was one of the first people I saw who really impressed me as both a composer and player. He’s got a great trio and I think he’s very thoughtful in both composition and in his concept of the type of music his trio plays. All this being said, as far as inspiration goes, these days I seem to be inspired to compose by music other than jazz.

The hardest thing leading a group is really doing enough gigs so your band has some sort of a presence on the scene. There aren’t a huge amount of well-established places to play original jazz in Sydney so it can be difficult to get regular work. I try and continually write new stuff, so if I don’t have any trio gigs for a month or two then it’s still very much on my mind. Having a lot of new material all the time also motivates me to go out and book gigs to see what works and what doesn’t.

The main thing I’m focused on at the moment is getting everything sorted for recording our album. We’re recording in February and hope to have it out a bit later in the year. We’ve got a couple of gigs booked over the next month or two then we’ll do a bunch more when the record comes out. Buy our record.

Favourite album: Too hard to say, but for what I’ve been listening to over the last few months it’d be between:
Matt Penman – Catch of the Day,
Gerald Clayton – Two Shade and
David Binney and Edward Simon – Oceanos.

Brendan:
Favourite YouTube Video:
Best live gig seen: The Necks at the Riverside Theatre. I couldn’t even manage to stay for the second set, it was that intense!
Favourite Album: Too many to count, but I’ll say Sam Rivers – Violet Violets

Later,
Eamon

P.S. Check out this great track from last night:

Also make sure you check out Casey’s Myspace for updates about gigs and the new album.